ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Some of his firm’s biggest clients are in town this week, which means John Cunningham needs to be on his A-game.
One part of that game includes the great Australian male pass time – binge drinking.
Last night at a popular French Quarter nightspot, John and a choice group of senior partners, junior partners and other executives devoid of a greater defining feature, entertained their big white whales with drinks, fine food and great conversation.
All of which to a toll on the young private wealth manager, who bid his party farewell last night at around 1 AM – leaving him just enough time to briskly walk down the hill to the Rue de Jardin Metro Station and board the last Green Line service to Betoota Heights.
It was only four stops but it seems the sensibly-priced malbec sloshing around in his tum-tum proved to be too powerful.
Shortly after the Metro left Rue de Jardin, the 28-year-old was dead to the world.
Close to an hour passed before a train guard violently shook the piss-wrecked Gemini back to life.
“W…w…where am I, bro?” uttered John, the bitter tannins stuck to the roof of his mouth took him by surprise.
“You’re out at the Ponds, mate. You’ve gotta get off. Metro service terminates here,” replied the train guard.
“Next one back into town leaves in a couple hours.”
It occurred to John, albeit slowly, that he was a long way away from home in a suburb that the local media has painted in a negative light as of late.
He spoke to The Advocate this afternoon through a hangover haze, he says, that would kill the toughest kelpie in Coonamble.
“It hit me like a tonne of bricks,” he said.
“They wouldn’t even let me wait in the station, they kicked me out onto the street at 2:34 AM in Betoota Ponds. First thing I did was put my phone down the side of a boot and the wallet down the other. There I was, standing in the carpark of the station, watching these kids ride around on their pushbikes,”
“Some folk were crowded around a 44-gallon drum fire. I honestly thought I’d be mugged. I didn’t exactly look like I belonged there,”
“So I tried to play it cool. I lit a smoke and sat down on the steps of the station and waited. Then the bike gang came over and basically told me that I was going to give them all a cigarette. So I did. Just as the train was about to leave back into the city, they asked for the whole packet. I didn’t want a steak knife thrust into my liver so I just gave it up,”
“It wasn’t as bad as people say it is, out at the Ponds. Wouldn’t live there, but.”
More to come.
